Nokia filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington earlier this week in an effort to help Apple achieve a permanent injunction of some Samsung phones.

According to Nokia, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh was wrong in making Apple show "causal nexus" between demand for the iPhone and the patent violations.

Keith Broyles, Nokia's attorney from Alston & Bird, said that Nokia joined the case as an ally for Apple in order to protect patents for future innovative devices.

"Nokia has recently been involved in numerous U.S. patent lawsuits, as both a plaintiff and defendant," Broyles wrote. "Nokia is thus both a significant patent owner that might seek an injunction to protect its patent rights, and a manufacturer in an industry in which patent owners routinely issue threats of injunctions for patent infringement."

This case has been ongoing for some time. Last June, Apple's patent infringement claims against Samsung for its Galaxy Nexus phone led to a preliminary injunction, ruled by Judge Koh. Samsung then appealed this ruling on July 1 in an attempt to lift the temporary ban. The ban stayed.

However, in December, Judge Koh denied Apple's request for a permanent injunction against certain Samsung phones, which sent the case back to appeals court. Now, apparently Nokia wants in on the action.

Yep and Microsoft won that case. Let's be honest, Samsung did clearly copy Apples iPhone design to a certain degree with their Galaxy S phone.

In the eyes of the law that's not the problem. There's only a problem if they make it similar enough so it could be reasonably mistaken by consumers for the iPhone, i.e. Trade Dress.

The other software patents are ridiculous. A bounce back animation or extracting telephone numbers from an email should not be patentable at all.

Code should be copyrighted. Anyone should be able to copy someones software functionality if they implement it with their own code and it doesn't infringe on anyone's Trade Dress. If the code is truly different it will pass any copyright challenge.

quote: Let's be honest, Samsung did clearly copy Apples iPhone design to a certain degree with their Galaxy S phone.

A bigger screen in a case that was almost a full 50% larger by area, The word "Samsung" emblazoned on the device with no "Apple" or fruit logo, it used entirely different hardware, had some differentiating features and most importantly, ran a completely different OS.

It most certainly was not a copy. Not even close.

Now, if someone wants to say that Samsung took design cues from the iPhone, then that's different and I'll agree with that. Much in the same way that Apple took design cues from Palm (but didn't copy the Palm Pilot or steal anything), and also design cues from Blackberry and other Win Mobile devices out there.

The debate now starts as to whether those design cues were protected under patent law, and also if those patents should have even been granted. Keep in mind that Samsung was never found guilty for the "black rectangle with rounded corners" patent that so many like to mention.

Despite the photo shopped picture that iFans like to point to, the iPhone and Galaxy S weren't even close in looks.

quote: A bigger screen in a case that was almost a full 50% larger by area, The word "Samsung" emblazoned on the device with no "Apple" or fruit logo, it used entirely different hardware, had some differentiating features and most importantly, ran a completely different OS. It most certainly was not a copy. Not even close.

Why do people with no grasp or understanding of the patents or patent law even post such drivel.

Firstly - you mention the Samsung logo. Do you think a car company can copy a BMW down to every last detail but write their own logo on the side, and that's OK?

Secondly - whether they looked the same, whether people could tell them apart or not, and the hardware they used, have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any of this case. There are certain design aspects of the home screen which are in question (layouts, colours of icons, springboard at the bottom) as well as utility patents, such as bounce back etc - all of which Samsung thoroughly documented themselves copying.

The 'black rectangle with rounded corners' patent (which is not that at all) was found in Germany to be infringed by the Galaxy Tab, with two Samsung lawyers unable to point out which tablet was the iPad and which was the Galaxy Tab.

"We are going to continue to work with them to make sure they understand the reality of the Internet. A lot of these people don't have Ph.Ds, and they don't have a degree in computer science." -- RIM co-CEO Michael Lazaridis